Quiet day in the shop (being -20 and all) so I thought I’d do the bass port mod on my K701s, first listened to a few tracks from Bill Laswell, Underworld’s "Dubnobasswithmyheadman”, Pandelis Karayoris Trio and Rammstein "Reise, Reise" and then play them again after the mod.
All I can say is “merde”, I’m running them off an old Technics 25 year old receiver in the shop but…… where’s that distant shallow sounding stage and limp bass, holy schmolly, almost a totally different phone but in a good way!!
Also listened to Stockhausen: Bass Clarinet & Piano to make sure the sound staging and depth was still there, now even better than I remember.
The mod FWICT helps to fill in the mid-range and adds a bit of space from front to back by actually making separation much clearer. With the fuller lower midrange and bass the K701s also now sound a lot less plastically and also richer overall with no added bloat.
I would say this mod does change the K701s personality somewhat but from what I can tell in no negative way unless one doesn’t like a little added richness in their lives.
I’ll need to try them later at home off the Bryston BHA-1/BCD-1 combo, hope they sound horrible and it's just a placebo (but I don't think so) as I just got my new pair of Sennheiser HD700’s.